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Thread: Profanity in Novels

  1. #106
    Registered User myrna22's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PeterL View Post
    Put both paragraphs together. What was "vile and racist" on the West Caost was simply loutish on the East Coast.
    Using the n-word is and was racist, a racist insult and slur. Where your fram of reference comes from I don't know. It doesn't matter where you live or lived. To defend the use of the n-word before the civil rights movement is pure ignornace and probably racism as well. Why you would want to defend it is incomprehensible.
    The answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.
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  2. #107
    Pièce de Résistance Scheherazade's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by blp View Post
    Perhaps there's something, dare I say it, more intimate going on between an author and reader than there is in a lot of conversation. Something like that.
    I agree with this. I remember reading in an article (by Barton?) that people tend to remember only one half a 20 minutes talk accurately and even this is during a lecture/speech... So, in daily life, it is quite likely that this is less, owing to other distractions available simultaneously.

    The reader chooses (mostly) to give their undivided attention to the text and can always re-read, which is something to do with the permanency of the text as well.

    I think a lot of this discussion depends on the role author assumes or our expectations as readers. If we expect an author to create realistic characters/accounts, how can we get offended if/when an author uses the N-word or swearing to be able to tell us "lsay it as it is"?
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  3. #108
    www.markbastable.co.uk
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    Quote Originally Posted by myrna22 View Post
    Using the n-word is and was racist, a racist insult and slur. Where your fram of reference comes from I don't know. It doesn't matter where you live or lived. To defend the use of the n-word before the civil rights movement is pure ignornace and probably racism as well.
    Does it matter if you live in Compton? Is it still racist when used by black kids? In that frame of reference, is it acceptable - or would we say that the use of the word by youths to describe themselves and their peer group was 'a racist insult and a slur'?

    All usage of all words is contextually determined. Words have no independent and immutable meaning - they can only do their job in the frame of time, place, intention, association and situation.

    And our understanding of words - the very ability to communicate - relies on a shared experience of all that - which, incidentally, is never a hundred percent. It's a workable compromise.

    When a skinhead beats up a guy because he's 'queer', he is not using the word to mean the same thing as a miltant gay who's proud to be 'here and queer, get used to it'. There's enough overlap in their usage of the word that we understand what both of those people mean - but we also know that they each mean something different and probably incompatible.

    The question to answer, I think, would be whether you believe the poster is racist. If you don't, then you're bringing into play other knowledge - context - to make that assessment. And if you do, then you're saying that the word is an infallible indicator of the belief. You're sayng that the very utterance of the word betrays unacceptable attitudes in the user.

    And that interpretation of usage, I'd say, is what made Salem famous.

  4. #109
    Voice of Chaos & Anarchy
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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkBastable View Post
    I do, and I have been. And the sales figures would suggest they were read too. The people in both novels speak as people speak in London - just ordinary vernacular swearing. At no point in the process of editing, subbing, proofing or marketing did anyone at Hodder suggest modifying the language.
    Then you remained polite. Politeness does not require daintyness in language, but it requires that one not be rude.

    Quote Originally Posted by myrna22 View Post
    Using the n-word is and was racist, a racist insult and slur. Where your fram of reference comes from I don't know. It doesn't matter where you live or lived. To defend the use of the n-word before the civil rights movement is pure ignornace and probably racism as well. Why you would want to defend it is incomprehensible.
    As I wrote earlier, it appears that you and I are familiar with different versions of Earth.

    There are damned few enough words in the language as it ia, and I don't want to limit myself any further. (paraphrase of a line in "Inherit the Wind"

  5. #110
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    Quote Originally Posted by PeterL View Post
    Then you remained polite. Politeness does not require daintyness in language, but it requires that one not be rude.
    Obviously I was using the word in the context of this thread. Mr Bean and others are making the argument that it is not polite to swear. My contention is that that kind of politeness is not the concern of a novelist, when writing.

  6. #111
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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkBastable View Post
    Obviously I was using the word in the context of this thread. Mr Bean and others are making the argument that it is not polite to swear. My contention is that that kind of politeness is not the concern of a novelist, when writing.
    I strongly agree with you. There are authors who toss in crude language to fill space, and that is not good, but characters should engage in dialogue in real language.

  7. #112
    Quote Originally Posted by PeterL View Post
    I strongly agree with you. There are authors who toss in crude language to fill space, and that is not good, but characters should engage in dialogue in real language.
    But what if that real language reduces the art? I'm sure that Richard III or Henry V didn't speak as Shakespeare penned but we are all the better for Shakespeare's improvements.

  8. #113
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neely View Post
    But what if that real language reduces the art?
    What if it doesn't?

  9. #114
    Quote Originally Posted by MarkBastable View Post
    What if it doesn't?
    What if it does?

    I'm just happy that Shakespeare for one didn't go in such pointless ploys as utter realism in language...heaven forbid! imagine Wilde's character's as straight-faced Victorian gentlemen, how dull...

  10. #115
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neely View Post
    What if it does?

    I'm just happy that Shakespeare for one didn't go in such pointless ploys as utter realism in language...
    If I were writing in rhyming couplets, or blank verse, or having my characters muse out loud for minutes at time, or having teenagers converse in beautifully-wrought poetry encompassing extended metaphor, classical reference and the coining of new words off-the-cuff, then I would probably consider whether swearing would be one of the aspects of realism I'd ditch along with every other pretence that this was a representation of how people speak.

    But those are the choices Shakespeare made - and I'm very glad he made them. They are not, however, the only choices there are.

    All art is artifice. All representation of reality is a trick. Each writer decides which artificial means to use in order to pull the trick off. Me, I sometimes decide to include real places, but sometimes I invent places. I sometimes take the conventional view of time as a given, and sometimes I f**k about with how time works. Sometimes I swear, or my narrator does, or my characters do, and sometimes they don't. It depends what I'm trying to achieve - what artificial reality I'm creating.

    What I object to is the notion that it's by default better to exclude swearing because you're more likely to end up with good writing. That's just crap.
    Last edited by MarkBastable; 03-24-2010 at 10:38 AM.

  11. #116
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neely View Post
    But what if that real language reduces the art? I'm sure that Richard III or Henry V didn't speak as Shakespeare penned but we are all the better for Shakespeare's improvements.
    Apples and onions. Shakespeare was writing poetry, poetical drama. If he had been writing prose fiction, then it would be a different matter.

    Since Shakespeare wrote what he did and did not write prose versions of the same things, complete with foul language, we can't tell which version would be better. For all we know those versions might be better.

  12. #117
    unidentified hit record blp's Avatar
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    Is everyone really so certain Shakespeare was profanity-free?
    http://www.essaydepot.com/essayme/1159/index.php

  13. #118
    I don’t object to swearing in particular as I said here:

    I don't object to swearing, I object, like Wilde to the burden of absolute accuracy which threatens in its way to reduce the art and the experience we get through art.
    If people are so enamoured of facts then I don’t know why people bother to read literature at all. Surely, turning to science or to the history books would be more useful? Of course many people enjoy realism in literature, that is fine, but I personally do not, I do not want to read soap operas.

    In terms of swearing in Shakespeare, of course many of his low characters uttered such things, including sexual innuendo, extreme insult (some great insults) and whatever else, but not for one second did Shakespeare ground a work in absolute fact to rob it of its overall endurable beauty for to do so would surely be one of the worst crimes possible.

  14. #119
    unidentified hit record blp's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neely View Post
    I don’t object to swearing in particular as I said here:



    If people are so enamoured of facts then I don’t know why people bother to read literature at all. Surely, turning to science or to the history books would be more useful? Of course many people enjoy realism in literature, that is fine, but I personally do not, I do not want to read soap operas.

    In terms of swearing in Shakespeare, of course many of his low characters uttered such things, including sexual innuendo, extreme insult (some great insults) and whatever else, but not for one second did Shakespeare ground a work in absolute fact to rob it of its overall endurable beauty for to do so would surely be one of the worst crimes possible.
    You're tilting at windmills now. I've already said my defense of profanity wasn't a case for realism and I don't see anyone else here insisting on realism either. That isn't the point.

  15. #120
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neely View Post
    If people are so enamoured of facts then I don’t know why people bother to read literature at all. Surely, turning to science or to the history books would be more useful? Of course many people enjoy realism in literature, that is fine, but I personally do not, I do not want to read soap operas.
    Almost by definition, soap opera is not realistic, in either the literary or vernacular sense of that word. It's a kind of cartoon - and I think most people who watch soap opera know that.

    But we probably are closer to agreeing than it would appear. I don't think anyone has suggested that the a realist approach should be pursued to the point of burdensomenessosity. They're just saying that swearing happens and it's somehow perverse to try and avoid it when writing fiction. It's like trying to write without ever mentioning rain. Rain happens. You don't have to be an ultra-realist meteorologist to accept that that's so. You can acknowledge the universality of rain, even when you're writing your weather-based allegorical sword-and-barometer faery murder mystery. Same with swearing.

    Though, having said that, if there's one thing I can't bear it's a dwarf who growls, 'By the bloody axe of Tharg the Mighty, 'tis a wondrous sight..."

    I'd rather he just said, "Well, I'll be buggered..."
    Last edited by MarkBastable; 03-24-2010 at 08:33 PM.

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